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punittrinl.

The Frome election took place on Monday and Tuesday. Three can- didates were put in nomination,—Mr. Donald Nicoll, Major Boyle, and Lord Edward Thynne. The show of hands was in favour of Mr. Nicoll, and the other two candidates demanded a poll. On reflection, however, Lord Edward Thynne withdrew in the evening, and left the electors a choice between two. The poll was spirited and close. Major Boyle started with a small majority, and maintained the lead until two o'clock, when Mr. Nicoll slightly drew ahead. The numbers at this stage were —Nicoll, 142 ; Boyle, 140. At three, Nicoll had polled 10 additional votes, and Boyle 8; at four, the numbers were—Boyle, 158; Nicoll, 157; majority for Boyle, one.

Captain Sturt has been returned for Dorchester, in the room of Mr. Start, without opposition.

Mr. Layard met his constituents at Aylesbury on Wednesday, to give an account of his public conduct as their representative. The greater part of his speech was occupied in pointing out the unsatisfactory cha- racter of the treaty of Paris, especially in those parts relating to the settlement of the Principalities and the new frontier line. He regretted to find that our policy was calculated to throw Turkey into the arms of France. Passing on to the consideration of the Anglo-French alliance, he said our present position as regarded France was utterly unworthy of this country, exceedingly dangerous, and unless we took care it would lead us into great difficulty. Some of Mr. Layard's hearers objected to his hankering after the war principle ; but they passed a vote of confidence in him.

Sixty-two ministers of religion in Manchester and Salford had an in- terview on Monday with the Mayor of Manchester, and presented a me- morial against Sunday bands in the public parks of that city : ninety-six names were attached, representing ministers of the Church of England, Wesleyan Methodists, Wesleyan Association, Primitive Methodists, Bap- tists, Independents, Presbyterians, United Presbyterians, Free Church of Scotland, and of the Methodist New Connexion.

Mr. Mechi's annual gathering at Tiptree Hall farm, near Kelvedon in Essex, now so well known, took place on Saturday. The prince of ama- teur farmers assembled between six and seven hundred gentlemen to witness the wonders he has worked on the worst soil in Essex by steam- power applied to irrigation, and many other processes of "high farming." When the guests assemble, the farmer host leads them over his two hun- dred acres, and not only displays his crops, but explains how they were cultivated, now and again giving practical examples of his theories. Having trudged over the farm, the guests assembled in a marquee on the lawn, and partook of dinner, with speeches to follow.

The suit promoted by the Reverend Joseph Ditcher, against the Reverend George Anthony Denison, Archdeacon of Taunton, for unsound doctrine preached at Wells in 1855, is now in progress before the Archbishop of Can- terbury sitting in the Guildhall of Bath, with his assessors, Dr. LushIngton, the Reverend Dr. Heartley, Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and the Reverend George Henry Sacheverell Johnson, Dean of Wells. The Court has been crowded with clergymen, and the case excites great in- terest. At present the proceedings, which began on Wednesday, are not far advanced.

The trial of William Dove, at York Assizes, lasted four days, terminating late on Saturday night.

William Dove was the son of a leather-manufacturer at Leeds, who died in December 1854, leaving his son 901. a year. Brought up as a irmer, the young man married, in 1852, Harriet Jenkins, the daughter of a leather- merchant at Plymouth. He gave up fanning in the beginning of 1855 ; lived for a few months near Normanton, and subsequently on the Kirkstall road, Leeds.

The evidence showed beyond dispute that Dove murdered his wife by ad- ministering strychnine in her medicine. It was shown that he had more

than once, even in his sober moments, threatened to " do for her." He seems to have imbibed from reading about the Palmer poisonings the idea that although strychnine might be found in a man it could not be found in a wo- man. He made many attempts to obtain strychnine and on one occasion spe- cifically applied to Harrison, a wizard, for some. lit length he bought some " to kill cats," and made several experiments on the lives of those creatures. With the same drug he poisoned dogs and mice ; - and on the 26th February.he gave some to his wife at breakfast. He wrote to his mother-in-law saying his wife was ill ; that she had come down better than usual—took "such a nice breakfast "—began to play on the piano, and was then seized with Sud- den pains ; but, thank God, she was " still alive." Next day he adminis- tered more strychnine ; and. calling in a neighbour, begged her to speak to his wife " about religious subjects—about her soul." On the following day he wrote to the surgeon Morley, to ask him " to speak to Mrs. Dove on re- ligion, as she felt herself a sinner" : he was quite sure sho could not re- cover. " Did you notice," he said to the neighbour, " how I was obliged

to go into the adjoining room and weep ? I could control myself." Every fit he expected would be her last. All the time, he was giving his wife small doses of strychnine disguised in her medicine—sometimes thrice in one day. All the time, he appeared anxious about her spiritual condi- tion. At length he gave her a strong dose and washed out the glass. Mrs. Dove died in great agony. When the murderer came back he sat on her bedside and kissed the corpse ! Dove's defence, without abandoning the denial of the charge, was a plea

of mental unsoundness. To make out this, his counsel brought a host of witnesses. The first was the Reverend Mr. Jenkins, head master of a junior college at Madras, and brother-in-law of Dove. He had come from India for the purposes of this inquiry. He considered Dove incoherent, im- pulsive, a reprobate. Then there were Dove's nurse, three or four schoolmasters, a farmer who undertook to teach Dove farming, farm- labourers, and domestic servants. Some statements were elicited in the cross-examination of witnesses for the Crown, and some were made by the prisoner's counsel. The collection of stories intended to prove un- sound mind are curious. When yet a child of seven, Dove put a lighted candle in a basket and locked it in a cupboard, and put candles and salt in a coffee-mill. One schoolmaster said he was a w dull boy and a bad boy" ; "punishment never did well with him, and he ap- peared to be deprived of reason" ; "he had glimmerings of intellect, but was as near an idiot as could be." Another spoke of him as " more of an animal than a rational creature" ; a third described how he had been com- pelled to take a pistol from Dove, who had threatened to kill his father. At fifteen, Mr. Frankish of Sherburn took him to learn farming. He put vitriol on the cows and calves ; he burnt the eyes of eats with vitriol ; he put vitriol in the water-trough; he hoisted the leg of a cow over a beam ; he threatened to kill people with a pitchfork and pistols ; he could never understand the rotation of crops. When at home at the age of seventeent ho set fire to the bed-curtains and put them out with water. He weld to Canada, and on his return, in 1862, married Miss Jenkins. He then took a farm at Bramham. Here he is described as having indulged in strange pranks. One day he is found lying in the road, his face covered with his hands and his eyes red with weeping ; at another time he is rifting furiously backwards and forwards pricking his horse with a nail ; on a third occasion he reaped his barley green, remarking that he was "behind everybody " ; and he had been seen practising magic with a saucer and gunpowder. He drank immoderately. He frequently quarrelled with his wife, and threat- ened to shoot her and his mother-m-law. He consulted one Harrison,. a wizard t chiefly, when drunk ; and then he talked of being hunted by devils and spirits and thunder and lightning. He hunted "noises" about the house. " He attributed the thunder and lightning to the Devil," said Har- rison : "I attributed his state to delirium tremens." After his arrest, he wrote to his mother-in-law from York Castle, solemnly asserting his inno- cence. The following letter, written in blood, was found in his clothes- " Dear Devil—If you will get me clear at the Assizes, and let me have the enjoy7 ment of life, health, wealth, tobacco here, more food and better, and my wishes granted till I am sixty, come to me tonight.

" I remain your faithful subject, WiLmaat DOVE."

Dr. Caleb Williams, of the Retreat Medical Asylum, York, was examined at great length. In his opinion, Dove was under the influence of insane delusions and uncontrollable impulses. Other medical witnesses were ex- amined.

The Judge summed up ; read over the evidence • and laid down the law regarding insanity. The Jury deliberated three-quarters of an hour, and then returned a verdict of " Guilty," with recommendation to mercy on the ground of defective intellect. In passing sentence, Mr. Justice Bramwell said, the Jury in their verdict had yielded to the natural impulse of pity and recommended the prisoner to mercy : that recommendation should be forwarded to the proper quarter. and mercy might be extended to him; but it was his duty to pass upon him the sentence of the law, and to tell.him to prepare for death, and not to cherish hopes which might turn out to be delusive.

Dove seemed stupified by the sentence, and was removed about eleven at night, when the trial closed amid solemn silence.

At Dorchester Assizes, Elizabeth Martha Brown was tried for the murder of her husband, at Broadwindsor. The case was peculiar. Brown was a very young man, about twenty years of age ; the wife was more than twice as old, and she was jealous. Early in the morning ahe called in a neighbour ; her husband was dead, his bead dreadfully mangled. She said that this had been done by his horse trampling on him when he he returned home ; that she had assisted him into the house, along the passage, to an inner room ; there he had grasped her dress so tightly that for a long time she was a prisoner and could not rouse the neighbour. To invalidate this story, it was shown at the trial that the wounds could hardly have been produced by a horse's hoof ; wounded as he was, Brown would have been insensible; and could not have got to his house and entered it even with his wife's aid ; he could not have held her by the dress ;. there were no marks of blood over his clothes, on his wife's clothes, or in the passage, as there must have been if the wife's tale had been true. The Jury, after a long consultation, came to the conclusion that the prisoner had butchered her-husband by beating him on the head : they pronounced her " Guilty,"—a verdict in which the Judge concurred ; and she was sen- tenced to be hanged.

At Stafford .Assizes, Benjamin Little, father of a boy named John, de.- ceased, brought an notion for compensation for the loss of his son, against Mr. Hackett, owner of a mine at Causeway Green. John Little, William Booth, and William Harris, were working at night in the pit ; choke-damP poured down the shaft from an old working ; there were no means of com- municating with the surface. Booth managed, in six hours, to crawl up the shaft-chain for 150 yards ; but he could get no higher i he tied himself to the chain, and eventually he was saved. Little and Harris could not mount the chain, and they gradually sank under the influence of the gas—for hours Booth could hear them talking, gradually speaking fainter and fainter, and at length all was still. The action was brought on the ground that Mr. Hackett had disobeyed the act of Parliament in two particulars—there ass not proper ventilation, and there were no means of communicating with the surface. The action was stopped by Mr. Hackett making an arrangement

with Little ; and a suit at the instance of Booth for hurts sustained was stopped in the same way.

Mr. Theodore Evans, late manager of the Tewkesbury branch of the Glou- cestershire Bank, has been remanded, on bail, by the Tewkesbury Magis- trates, on charges of embezzling upwards of 30001.

Mr. Symington, a papermaker at Tickhill Friars, has been charged at Doncaster Petty-Sessions with numerous frauds on the Excise. He was sued for penalties amounting to 16,3601. He pleaded guilty to all the charges ; and mitigated penalties, amounting to 38901., were imposed.